Bella's Christmas Bake Off: A fabulously funny, feel good Christmas read

by Sue Watson

  ‘Oh shut up, Fliss. Stop scaring me and telling me to step up, that’s your job… if my ratings are slipping then you need to do something, you’re my agent…THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!’ she yelled. Bella had always had a temper and I could see the little girl now with her hands on Fliss’s shoulders shaking them quite firmly as Fliss shook her. They wound each other up and any minute one of them was going to slap the other, claiming ‘she was hysterical’. It was like some weird double act.

  What the hell was going on here? Why was Bella shouting, why was her agent barking at the moon, and most importantly why was the gorgeous Silver Fox in bed at ten o’clock in the morning, completely alone?

  Bella was clearly upset and cross with Fliss and if memory served me well her temper may soon reach boiling point. I recalled a similar scene in our kitchen at home when at the age of eight I’d suggested my cupcakes were prettier than hers. It hadn’t ended well, when Bella snatched up my plate of cupcakes and threw them on the floor, screaming ‘Whose cupcakes are prettier now?’

  Meanwhile, Fliss and Bella were still screaming at each other and only when Fliss told her the truth did she seem to hear her.

  ‘Bella… when I said the ratings aren’t good, I meant, bad… like dropping… no, dahling, I lied, they are plummeting.’

  At this, Bella whipped off her scarlet pinafore, hurled it to the ground and stomped off through the kitchen, and from the thumping noise, I guessed she’d gone upstairs. This was confirmed when a door above us was slammed so hard it nearly took the paint off the ceiling.

  Good luck getting any sleep in there now, Peter, I thought, imagining that poor beleaguered war hero in a tangle of sheets desperate for some peace while she banged on about her precious ratings.

  I looked around, but everyone seemed to be taking Bella’s dramatic exit in their stride, obviously used to it. Billy, who it seemed was rarely vertical, now lay on the sofa in the living room, while the camera and sound men wandered off for a bacon sandwich, unperturbed. Fliss was muttering to Crimson that ‘we are a man down’ and she was looking vacantly back, which I assumed was her default look.

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked Fliss, walking towards her and Crimson, who was now sitting on the kitchen worktops painting her nails – black.

  ‘Hi, Crimson.’ I smiled, she was obviously as crazy as the rest of them, but I was desperate to bond with somebody on this shoot.

  ‘Hi Amy,’ she monotoned without even looking up from her shiny dark talons. And just to give an indication of how lonely I felt, I was actually pleased to hear those disinterested tones laced with sinister sarcasm.

  She finished panting her nails, looked up and seemed genuinely surprised, though it was hard to work out her emotions under the white make-up and eye-shadow. ‘Jeez, what happened to you?’ she said. ‘You looked like a weirdo when you came in this morning, but you look okay now,’ she said this without a smile, but I guessed coming from Crimson this was a compliment, I couldn’t possibly expect a smile too. ‘That red is sick on you…’ she said, looking me up and down.

  ‘Thank you,’ I smiled, hoping she meant ‘sick’ in the way Year Ten said their favourite bands were ‘sick’ and not in any way a reference to me looking like vomit – it seemed with Crimson one could never be sure.

  ‘When you walked in before, you looked like you’d just stepped out of …’

  ‘Yes I know. I look quite different now,’ I said quickly in an effort to stop any more allusions to the Amish community. I’d arrived with little self-esteem as it was and after the battering I’d taken earlier from Fliss, Bella, Ruth and Billy the last thing I needed was Crimson the Goth researcher/maid giving me her unplugged opinion on my wardrobe.

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked.

  ‘What always happens. We wait, the cameramen eat, the world turns…’ Crimson sighed.

  ‘Yes and the budget goes through the sodding roof,’ Fliss added tightly. ‘At this rate we won’t be finished until midnight.’

  ‘Do any of the recipes need preparing?’ I asked. ‘Can we save time before she comes back down?’ I was worried hours would be taken up with waiting and there’d be no time left for me to actually talk to Bella properly after filming, which was one of the main reasons for coming here.

  ‘What we need is Bella to actually be down here doing her job for once, I’d take a bloody Bella lookalike right now, someone to stand in for a few shots and… hang on, give me your hands,’ Fliss said, nearly pulling my arms out of my sockets in her sudden desperation to get to my hands then screeching ‘Billy… Billy dahling… emergency treatment needed at the bunker.’

  Billy appeared at my side with his bag of tools.

  ‘Billy, my angel, would you please brandish your magic wand and turn Amy’s fingernails into Bella’s so we can use her hands in a close-up. If we don’t get something in the can the budget won’t take all these people hanging around doing nothing… and I don’t want to be the one to tell them we can’t leave the trenches until midnight.’

  ‘Erm, shouldn’t we see if Bella’s happy about this?’ I said, worried about the fallout of me filming in her kitchen without her. When I’d offered to help I simply meant by getting the ingredients together, maybe breaking a few eggs, not being the star’s hand twin.

  Before I knew what was happening, Billy was working on my nails, filing and buffing and polishing and then covering them in the glossiest reddest varnish I’d ever seen.

  ‘Wow it’s lovely,’ I said waggling my new scarlet talons as Fliss gathered the crew together for what she called ‘a war cabinet debrief’, but what looked to me like a chat over coffee and fags on the freezing back lawn.

  Eventually they all came back in and I still couldn’t quite get over how beautiful my hands were. I kept staring at them. It was as though Bella’s hands had been photo-shopped onto mine. Billy had done a wonderful job, and I was feeling ‘very Bella’ in the scarlet suit and red lipstick.

  ‘Now,’ Fliss barked and everyone jumped, including me. ‘I want you all in your places we’re going to do a run through with little Amy here.’

  With that she stepped back, and a confused Crimson appeared at my elbow and gently pushed me behind the worktop, under the lights, in front of the camera.

  ‘Oh Amy, you look amazing,’ Fliss was shouting. ‘I can’t believe you have never been in front of a camera before – and so photogenic, the camera LOVES your hands.’

  Fliss wasn’t facing me, she was shouting these compliments from the kitchen doorway and up the stairs.

  The cameraman was finding his position and the lighting woman was moving around me checking the skin tone on my hands which she said was close to Bella’s so wouldn’t be a problem. I felt like I was slowly morphing into Bella – I could see how easy it might be to slip into this life. Another day at Dovecote and I’d be calling everyone darling, referring to ‘filthy homeless’ and drinking vintage champagne.

  Fliss handed me Bella’s discarded scarlet apron and I tied it on over the trouser suit as the cameraman started setting up his camera and zooming in on my hands. Meanwhile Tim was chatting to Ruth the wardrobe mistress. ‘I was offered Dame Judi Dench’s latest stage play,’ he was saying; ‘she said, Tim darling, I need you to direct – I’m no one without you. But I said Jude, I have a commitment… so before you ask, yes I gave up Dame Judi to do this.’ He threw up his hands in horror.

  Within seconds, there was a noise from upstairs, a creaking door followed by footsteps on the landing.

  ‘Bella… is that you, dahling?’ Fliss called in a pantomime voice, her hand to her ear, smiling conspiratorially at everyone in the kitchen. There was no answer, but Fliss winked at us and continued to bustle and boss and shuffle papers while making loud comments in the direction of the hall about how ‘bloody fabulous Amy is’.

  Crimson handed me a large bowl filled with cake batter and manoeuvred me along the oasis as the cameraman and Tim were instructing.

  ‘A little to the left… no more right
…’ and so on.

  ‘What shall I do?’ I asked.

  ‘Make like Bella and put your hands in it,’ Crimson answered, rolling her eyes at me like I should know this.

  Tim nodded. ‘Yes, plunge your hands deep into that world of sweet confection, my darling…’

  I did and the camera filmed but bloody Tim didn’t shut up; ‘As you cream that butter and sugar just feel the joy of a million Christmases shudder through you…’ he was saying, dramatically sweeping around behind the camera and distracting everyone.

  I tried not to listen, it was quite off-putting, so I concentrated on what I was doing, praying that Bella would come back soon – this wasn’t as easy as it looked on TV.

  For a few minutes I kneaded the doughy batter as Tim gave me my ‘direction’. ‘Feel it, my love, give it your everything and baby just go with that dough…’ who thought kneading a lump of dough could be so theatrical? As the camera whirred, focusing only on my hands, Tim built himself into a frenzy, ‘Go on… go on…’ he was saying. ‘Rub it… rub it hard into your fingertips, feel the love and life in that bloody dough, darling.’

  Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling any love or life in the dough, just grit and vague embarrassment, but Tim was positively orgasmic at my digits, urging me on and making me even more uncomfortable. Then when he was almost spent and things were grinding to a halt everything stopped abruptly as a dark silhouette landed in the middle of the set. Bella was standing in the doorway. She had one arm leaning on the door jamb, a fag in her mouth and an evil look on her face. Tim leaped away from me and my dough like a husband caught in bed with another woman.

  ‘Oh, now little Amy’s all dressed up, I suppose you don’t need me anymore?’ she said, sashaying into the kitchen like a forties film star.

  ‘No, we were doing fine without you,’ Crimson sighed, barely looking up from her iPod. But Bella ignored her and was looking straight at me. I knew this look from the past and felt that old twinge of guilt as she stared me down. She’d always been the pretty one who got what she wanted, and if she didn’t – like now – she could be quite a handful. Now I was older, I wasn’t fooled or in awe of my old friend. I worked with teenagers and Bella was a walk in the park compared to the hormonal psychopaths of Year Ten and Eleven.

  Mike the cameraman had put down his camera and was now just waiting. He rolled his eyes at me and I smiled back, it was reassuring to think I wasn’t the only person in this kitchen who wasn’t certifiable.

  Bella slowly moved out of the doorway without taking her eyes off me and sashayed into the kitchen, her kitchen. She gestured for Billy to replenish her make-up, which I presumed must be a sign she was about to start filming again. Everyone stayed silent, watching sideways, like one would a naughty child who had to be ignored or they might blow again. Once her make-up was refreshed, her lips red and glossy, she came over and stood next to me in, it has to be said, a rather threatening manner. I wasn’t sure whether this was my cue to leave. I glanced over at Fliss for confirmation, but I couldn’t see her for Crimson’s plume of black backcombed hair.

  ‘Get on with it, Bella,’ Crimson said, completely unfazed by the whole drama, she seemed to be the only person here who didn’t pander to Bella and said what she thought.

  I felt my basic teacher/child psychology was fitting for this situation and waded in. ‘You okay now, Bella?’ I said, slowly looking up at her, meeting her eyes which still held the flickering fire of her anger. ‘You always had a temper when we were younger, remember when I dropped ink on your homework?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘You went mad and threw the rest of the bottle over me,’ I laughed at the memory of her outrageous reaction to what was only an accident.

  But she didn’t laugh, she just stared straight ahead and without looking at me like a queen who wouldn’t look at anyone she deemed beneath her. ‘Have you finished reminiscing, Amy?’

  I shrugged, wiping my hands on a holly-embroidered tea towel, she was tougher than some of my Year Tens, but I wasn’t giving up just yet.

  ‘My mum used to say your temper was like a force of nature,’ I smiled, waiting for a glimmer of a reaction, for a moment of shared memory to bond us and calm her down. ‘Like a tempest tossing sailors around the sea,’ I added. Crimson sniggered at the word tossing and I heard Fliss telling her to shush.

  ‘Mum was the only one who could calm you when you were like that and she always said “think about cool water, lapping on sand,” do you remember?’

  I looked at her, but she didn’t return my look, she was still avoiding my eyes. It was clear that I was wasting my time and couldn’t get through to her. Over the years, Bella had become harder, less accessible, and any thoughts I’d had about us ever being friends again were a lot further away than I’d ever imagined.

  Wordlessly, I took off the scarlet apron and handed it to her. She took it, thanked me then turned, opened the oven door, and took out the huge ham still in its oven tray.

  ‘Are cameras rolling?’ she asked. Mike the cameraman immediately turned on the camera and a sound guy moved into position.

  Everyone was watching silently. I felt at a complete loss and wondered if I should just go home. This was pointless, but I had to stay and put up with all this, because while I stuck by my agreement to go along with her programme and not say anything, Bella had to stand by hers. I wasn’t letting St Swithin’s down – and neither was she.

  Perhaps that stuff about my mum and her temper was probably too personal to share in front of the others? Had I just completely closed the door on any kind of communication with her by talking of the past? She was now carrying the heavy glistening ham carefully, unsmiling, Stepford-like in her scarlet apron. Earlier she’d basted the ham for the camera, she’d massaged and ooed and aahed about its sweet plumpness for too long, but what happened next was quite a surprise.

  10

  Sex, Chocolate and a War-torn Husband

  ‘I’m bored, bored, bored,’ she suddenly announced, walking precariously across the kitchen on high heels carrying the huge ham. ‘I’m bored of you all, but most of all I’m bored of being told what to say, how to act and who to tell what to. I can’t bloody breathe in my own home!’ she was yelling at anyone and everyone. ‘And will you stop smirking?’ she waved her arm in Crimson’s direction – but Crimson stuck her tongue out.

  Billy was on standby with a holdall full of brushes and make-up so he could go back in after Bella’s storm had subsided and put more lipstick on. Tim was looking at Bella and telling her she was wonderful, the lighting woman was re-adjusting the lights and Fliss was taking a swig from a diamante hip flask.

  ‘Dahling, we don’t want to get all excited now do we, sweetcakes?’ she said between swigs.

  ‘We do… oh yes we bloody do!’ Bella screamed, taking a swig from the proffered flask. ‘I want to get very excited,’ and with that she lifted the huge ham from its tray. She was now holding it against her, and the warm fat and syrup and sugar was drenching her lovely blouse but she didn’t seem to care. She stood defiantly in the middle of the beautiful kitchen and raised that wonderful ham high in the air, and it was then I realised, to my horror, that she was about to hurl it across the kitchen.

  ‘NO,’ I screamed, which of course egged her on, and she launched it through the air like a shot-putter. In a split second I leaped up to try and catch it. This was food, it might not have meant much to bloody Bella, with her fabulous cars and glittery diamonds and twenty foot tree, but throwing a beautiful Christmas ham was pure waste in my book, and besides it was dangerous. She could have knocked someone out with that huge ham, so screaming ‘BELLA NO,’ I lunged forward, throwing my whole body at it arms out like I was trying to catch a large ball. But as it landed in my arms I was amazed to feel how light it was, like a ball – just like a rubber ball. A rubber ball that I couldn’t hold on to. I looked down in horror as it fell from my arms and slowly bounced along the kitchen floor. Everyone was staring, open-mouthed, Bella’s tantrum was clearly nothing out
of the ordinary, but me rugby-tackling a syrupy ham apparently was. In the silence I finally said what everyone else already knew. ‘It’s fake.’

  ‘That’s not the only fake thing in this kitchen,’ Crimson said, rolling her eyes.

  This was followed by peals of laughter from Fliss who seemed to enjoy the whole spectacle and Bella whose temper had suddenly disappeared.

  ‘Oh Ames, your face is a picture… you didn’t think that ham was real did you?’ Bella asked, laughing at me, looking around at her audience, her courtiers, who laughed along politely.

  ‘Yes… I did. I thought… silly me, it looked like a real ham, I thought as it was a food show, you might just use… real food?’ I said sarcastically. Someone handed me a towel and I tried to mop the syrupy juices from my blouse.

  ‘Is this what all TV cookery programmes do?’ I asked.

  Bella nodded but everyone else shook their heads.

  ‘Well, Bella’s food is sometimes…“styled”, because as much as she loves to bake, the poor love just doesn’t have the time. And sometimes… we need to improvise… come into the sitting room, dahling, while Bella has a touch-up,’ Fliss was covering for her – again.

  She bustled me out of the kitchen where Bella was now being tended to by Tim and Billy. Crimson was skulking in a corner, her mouth downwards, her eyes shifting from side to side, she was sniggering at Bella.

  Fliss sat me down on the blue armchair and positioned herself on the pouffe, pulling it closer so her chin was almost on my knees. It was quite disconcerting.

  ‘This is mad,’ I started. ‘I honestly don’t believe this. It’s all just one big lie, the food is fake, other people dress the tree and, don’t tell me, someone else makes all of the other decorations?’

  ‘Crimson does the decorations, she’s been doing them for years now. She did A level art – never took it any further but she has talent.’